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I have put a blog out the past several years of the exploits of ‘Blown Inheritance’, the Nostalgia Eliminator 1 front engine dragster that I own and compete with along with my son who does the driving. Last year we were down most of the year and made only one appearance on the Southwest Heritage Racing Association circuit, that being the final event of 2018 where we did runner up to my daughter in law Tera. This year we hope to be a contender in the points battle and make each race. The first event was this past March 16 in Denton and here’s how it went.

Last year we had to rebuild the Powerglide tranny and replaced the convertor and while at it choose to rebuild the rear end. That effort delayed our racing program last year, but this year I think we are ready. A new pair of Hoosier slicks were purchased over the winter and a new look paint job was completed. A new year and season, our expectations were high coming into the first event.

We showed up at the race at North Star Dragway in Denton along with a full house of other nostalgia drag racers. Our class, Alkydigger NE1 had 10 cars in competition and with the temperatures in the upper 50’s and dry air, this was going to be a tough event to tune to. At each event we now do a ‘Chip Draw’ where each of the Nostalgia Eliminator classes pick a chip with their ‘Index’ on it. Our normal index is 4.65 in the eighth mile, but we could pull a chip for the class to run quicker at 4.60 or slower at 4.70. With the great air and ample available horsepower, hopes were to see the 4.60 chip drawn. But no, the 4.70 chip was drawn and there was a collective groan from the participants in the class. It sometimes can be harder to slow down a car than to make it quicker and with the great air we were hoping to not have to slow our cars down.

With that, we prepared for our first of two qualifying shots. I don’t have a lot of data for air conditions like we had at this event as we normally run in warm to hot air with humidity. This was going to be a challenge. I made my decisions on the tune up and we went up when our class was called. Chris accidently ‘deep staged’ when he was pulling our dragster into the beams, which can hurt the Elapsed Time on the run. 4.70 is what we were looking for and on the run we got a 4.67, just 3 hundredths to quick! The run still counts, but by running to quick it puts us at the bottom of the qualifying order. For the second and last qualifying run, I decided to take fuel away and lean it out some. My expectations were to slow the car down to a high 4.70. On that run, Chris staged normally, and the run went flawless. But we ran QUICKER! A 4.52 at 159 MPH is what appeared on the time slip and boy did I miss that tune! I think this is the quickest and fastest we have ever pushed ‘Blown Inheritance’ so it was kinda neat to make such great run but for what we were doing it was the wrong direction!
We qualified with our 4.67 which put us #7 in the 10 car field. Obviously, others were having a hard time slowing their cars down! Eliminations began with us lining up against Chris’ wife Tera, who beat us at the last race of 2018 in the final and she won the series championship last year in Nostalgia Eliminator 1. We got lucky and ruined her day when we took her out with a 4.76 to her 4.99! In the second round we lined up against the 2017 NE1 Champ Tommy Drozd and again we came out a winner when Tommy ran to quick and ‘broke out’ with a 4.68 (remember we are running a 4.70 index) to our 4.73! Wow, I couldn’t believe the luck! Next up was the injected front engine digger of Ricky Marshall who won the championship in another series in 2012 called Jr Fuel. He qualified #1 at this event so we were in for another battle! But we got yet another win to advance to the final round when our 5.44 beat Ricky’s up in smoke 7.33! Our opponent in the final round would be #2 in points last year and the 2013 NE1 Champ Steve Matthews in a new front engine dragster making it’s first event. The ‘Red River Raiders’ lined up against ‘Blown Inheritance’ in an all front engine dragster final in true nostalgia drag racing fashion! Matthews had trouble and our car marched down the track in a early shut off 4.85 to take the event win!

Needless to say, team ‘Blown Inheritance’ was pretty happy after this first of six events. We are tied for first place with Steve Matthews who earned a few extra points in qualifying over us so we have our work cut out to see if we can hang on at the top of the points as we move forward. Below is our winners’ photo from the event along with the qualifying and elimination ladder. Our next event is in Wichita Falls on May 18th and we plan to be READY!

So we move on to race #3 which is the first event for SHRA at the new Xtreme Raceway Park in Ferris on Saturday, June 8th. This will also be the DACC June club event where we will have a special $20 per car load pit side entry for '55-'57 Chevys only for a Tri Five Show in the pits along with the nostalgia drag racing! Hoping to see a good turnout of Tri Fives for this! DACC members will be in competition in the various classes, including our NE1 dragster, multi time series champ Jim Baughan with his '37 Chevy Coupe, Rico Padilla with his '57 Chevy, Ken Burton with his '56 Chevy and others!

We will be ready to race and with no rain this should be a big event as racers have been chomping at the bit to spin the tires! Come by the Blown Inheritance pits if you need ear plugs as we will have plenty for everyone!

Finally no rain! Xtreme Raceway Park in Ferris saw the SHRA for the first time ever this past June 8th and a fantastic Tri Five Chevy Show to boot! We came into the event leading the points, and the plan was to leave with that points lead.

The car has set idle since March 16th when we won the season opener in Denton and rain got the scheduled May event in Wichita Falls. A smaller field of cars showed up in our class for this event, but none the less they all are just as competitive. Our index for this event was the quick 4.60 second ET and with track temps in the mid 130 degrees and high humidity, making power and making it stick could be a challenge. The crew at the track sprayed water on the track surface to cool it before racing got underway and that likely helped. Our first of two qualifying runs produced an off the trailer 4.64, right in the ballpark!

So for the second qualifying session the plan was for me to 'tune it up a tad' and try to run just under the 4.60 index set for this event. What we got was a off pace 5.77 when Chris simply made a mistake and had his hand on the parachute levers and not the transmission shifter, so when he went to shift he pushed the lever to open the chutes (luckily he caught himself before popping both chutes before mid track!) but the error made the run worthless for data at that point and he lifted and coasted to the finish line. But we had good data up to the 60 ft time (there are timing blocks that read the times at different spots along the race track). Our 60 ft time on the first run that produced the 4.64 was 1.14 seconds, the 60 ft time on the second aborted run was 1.11 seconds, so we were on our way to a sub 4.60 run, exactly what we wanted!

After qualifying, we sat in the middle of the pack of 7 cars in competition in the #4 spot with that 4.64 run in Q1. Our first round opponent would be a injected front engine dragster of David Crow who was running a 10th of a second slower than us in qualifying, so the plan was to put the Q1 tuneup back in it as we felt this would easily defeat Crow. In that race, Crow got a small advantage at the green light but our big block blown Chevy hunted the small block injected dragster down and we took the win with a 4.66 over his 4.74 second pass.

Round 2 (the Semi Finals) found us up against Ricky Marshall who runs a absolutely beautiful injected front engine dragster (and it runs well too!). He was the #1 qualifier with a 4.63 second pass so we knew this would be a battle. I went back to the tune up we had in Q2, which likely would go quicker than our index if Chris kept his foot in it all the way. But index drag racing is a game and alot of it takes place at the finish line. What we planned on was to run it to the finish line and lift about 50 feet before the end, hoping to push Marshall into running quicker and breaking out and therefore losing. We expected both cars to run right at 4.60. That didn't happen as both dragsters fell off just a little (ours because Chris lifted about 50 ft from the finish line hoping to force Marshall into going too quick and losing). Marshall's slower 4.67 beat our 4.66 as Marshall had a very slight advantage at the green. The margin of victory was 18 thousandths of a second! Had Chris kept the peddle down that last 50 ft we would have run likely a 4.62ish number and got the win. Oh well, he had to make a judgement call and under the circumstances made the right call, it just was the wrong one!

Marshall went on to runner up in the event and we fell from 1st Place to 2nd with Marshall in 1st by only 5 points! That 18 thousandths of a second cost us the points lead and a few hundred dollars in winnings! That's drag racing! And a big thanks also to all the Tri Five folks who came out and displayed the '55-'57 Chevys!

Next up is Denton within just two weeks, at North Star Dragway on June 22nd. Our dragster likely will not be in competition unfortunately. On the last pass in Ferris, Chris said the oil pressure was 40 lbs (normally it's 80 lbs). He said he tried to get my attention as we were staging and getting ready to make that run but I failed to see him - I likely would have shut him off and not made the run to prevent damage to the engine. So with that, there is some work to do in a short period of time, which I seem to have very little of at times. I suspect we have some bearing damage, but to verify I will need to do the normal oil draining but this time carefully inspect it for fine specs of bearing material and cut open the oil filter to see what surprises might be there too. If there are bearings to replace, I can't see it getting done in time for Denton, which will hurt us in the points battle.

Below is the eliminations chart for the event and a nice shot of 'Blown Inheritance' taken at Ferris by photog Ronnie Barnes.

The oil pressure issue experienced during the last run at the previous race, was nothing but a broken off oil pickup extension. After dropping the pan, there sitting in the sump of the oil pan I found the small screened pickup tube extension that had broken off. The weld and the strap that held it in place finally gave up and only the tube was sticking in the bottom of the oil pan and not all the way down. I carefully inspected the oil, cut the oil filter open and did a inspection and found no obvious bearing material. I removed the oil pump and got the end welded back on, installed the oil pump and buttoned up everything and fired it up and 80 lbs of oil pressure! So off to Denton for the next race!

We arrived at the track, but threatening skies and a quickly changing forecast indicated we would not get the race in. So the call was made to call the race before we got started. Without even unloading the car, we headed back home and got it all unloaded and will wait for the next race, which right now is scheduled to be September 21st in Wichita Falls.

Below is a photo of the bottom of the oil pan, where I found the oil pickup screen laying in the oil when I dropped the pan. Much better than having bearing damage!!!